The Salt Range and the Potohar Plateau
05 May 2015
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Labels: Books, History, Punjab, Research, The Salt Range and the Potohar Plateau
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Capital of the Salt Range
21 July 2014
Even though the only monument of Chakwal is the century old Brandreth Gate, the town can rightly be assigned the status of ‘capital’ of the Salt Range. Now neglected and falling into decay, this gateway was built in 1892 to commemorate the services of a British civil servant.
Whatever local ‘historians’ may claim, no historical work mentions Chakwal even in recent history before the settlement of the 1850s. The name, however, appears to mean ‘Of the Chaks.’
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posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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The Castle of Raja Ambarikha
14 July 2014
Driving up the winding blacktop road from Quaidabad (Khushab district) to the village of Amb, one sees the spire of the temple rising thick and angular on the rising ground beyond the village. Close to, it sits imposingly on a plinth accessible by a flight of steps. At a height of almost eighteen metres through three storeys, the temple of Amb is the loftiest of all Hindu Shahya edifices in the Salt Range. It is imposing, too, because of the bulky pillars fronting it and giving it a clear Greco-Roman appearance. Made of the same pale gray limestone, the pillars appear to be part of the original building plan. Closer inspection, however, reveals the jagged remnants of a vaulted foyer that once afforded entry to the main chamber.
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posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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The Castle that Raja Mal built
30 June 2014
Legend attributes this fortress to Raja Mal or Mallu, the supposed progenitor of the Janjua Rajputs of the Salt Range. While Alexander Cunningham quotes the belief that he lived in the age of the Mahabharat, others declare him a contemporary of Mahmud of Ghazni. Whatever the case, most people agree that the fortress was built by this obscure Janjua chieftain. The crumbling battlements of Malot do not seem to be older than five or six hundred years, which coincides with the time that the Janjuas were predominant in this area. This, however, could possibly have been the time that the earlier structure was renovated, but that it was in fine trim in the 16th century we learn from the Babur Nama. After taking the fort of Malot (or Malkot near Batala, India) in January 1526, Babur banished the treacherous governor of Lahore Daulat Khan Lodhi and his sons under the charge of Kitta Beg to the ‘fort of Malot’ near Bhera.
Read more »Labels: Books, Punjab, The Salt Range and the Potohar Plateau
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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A Chinaman in the Salt Range
16 June 2014
Hiuen Tsiang, however, was no ordinary monk. Even before the pilgrimage he was an acknowledged Master, versed in the tenets of Buddhism for whom religious books, imperfectly translated from the Sanskrit into Chinese, were a source of everlasting yearning for the gospel of Buddha. Far from his home, beyond the death dealing deserts of Turkestan and across the Snowy Mountains, lay the land of his dreams: India - the birth place of the great Buddha. There, Hiuen Tsiang knew, were those great centres of learning that hummed day and night with the true word. In cloisters in that distant land, he knew, lay the original works of Buddhism. And there, too, were Masters who would have the answers to questions that had remained unanswered most of Hiuen Tsiang’s life as a monk.
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posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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The Monastery of Guru Goraknath
26 May 2014
Known as Tilla Jogian or simply Tilla, the hill, isolated from the rest of the Salt Range, rises sheer out of the broken, gullied land 25 kilometres southwest of the city of Jhelum. To one and all it is known as Tilla Jogian - The Hill of the Jogis after the ancient jogi monastery whose ruins mark the crest of the 1000 metre high peak. Known as Kunphutta, for their tradition of piercing their ears to adorn them with wooden rings, these jogis, once numerous all over the subcontinent, are the followers of Guru Goraknath.
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According to Alexander Cunningham, the hill was anciently dedicated to the sun god Balnath, and after him, known as Tilla Balnath. Later it came to be known after Goraknath, which, Cunningham believed, was a transmutation of Shiva. This latter name, according to him, is very recent. Following him, Ibbetson, Maclagan and Rose, compilers of the Glossary of Tribes, Castes and Clans wrote that Goraknath lived in the 15th century.
Labels: Books, History, Punjab, The Salt Range and the Potohar Plateau
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Baba Waite
05 March 2014
A simple man and a confirmed bachelor, Waite had served as the chief of police in Jhelum besides several other districts and had fallen in love with the Salt Range. After retirement though he lived largely in Kalabagh, he spent a great deal of time in these parts where he became a legend. Men in their forties remember receiving gifts of toys from him as young boys. Others recall his giving away a bicycle to a man who in the course of a conversation had said that his son walked ten kilometres to school and back daily. There is also the story of Waite lending some money to an acquaintance who failed to return it as promised. Until the day he died, Waite steadfastly refused to see his debtor again, even turning his face away when driving past the man’s village.
An eccentric and a misogynist to the soles of his boots, Waite is reputed to have never entered a rest house if a lady was known to be present – even when he might have arrived after a long journey at a late hour. It is also said that at the beginning of every winter he gave all three of his servants either overcoats or achkans according to their preferences. And that one time he even gifted a block of land to one servant to build his house. Upon inspecting the newly constructed house Waite found that the only thing lacking was the traditional wall-mounted crockery rack and gave an additional sum for that fixture as well.
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posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Kusak of the Janjuas
17 January 2014
Perched like an eagle’s eyrie high on an up-thrust of rock, the fort of Kusak existed early in the 16th century when Babur first passed through the Salt Range on his way to Bhera. Paucity of local records muffles the soft unfurling of history and we do not know what transpired in this remote hill fortress. Here the Janjuas of the eastern part might have repaired in anticipation of Babur’s attack, but from the latter’s chronicle we do know that he bypassed it.
Though Akbar and Jehangir both repaired to nearby valleys to hunt deer, we find no mention of their visits to Kusak. They may not have considered Kusak significant enough to merit a visit. In 1809, however, the Sikhs overran the Salt Range and the Janjuas fought a hard fight against the followers of Guru Nanak. The Sikhs triumphed and the fortress of Kusak fell into their hands. After the advent of the Raj, the fortress passed back to its original owners, the Janjuas of Wutli that lies a few kilometres northeast of Choa Saidan Shah from which place it can be accessed.
Labels: Books, History, Punjab, The Salt Range and the Potohar Plateau
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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‘Spring of the Raining Eyes’
15 January 2014
Shortly before entering the town of Choa Saidan Shah, the highroad to Kallar Kahar passes by a clump of old buildings overlooking an emerald pool. Those nearer the road all have fresh coats of wash, while the tall building on the far side of the pool seems untouched for years. This is Ketas Raj, revered by Hindus, sacred to Shiva the Destroyer, and once the centre of a grand annual yatra for devotees from all corners of the subcontinent.
Legend has it that when Sati died, her husband, Lord Shiva, was inconsolable. His tears flowed so that they virtually ‘rained from his eyes’, and from these tears two pools were formed. The one Pushkara near Ajmer in Rajastan and the other Ketaksha in the Salt Range - both greatly revered by followers of Shiva. And because the tears had rained from his eyes, hence Ketaksha or ‘Raining Eyes’. Through the usage of centuries, the word was abbreviated to Ketas as we know it today.
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posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Sassi da Kallara
14 November 2013
They call it Sassi da Kallara, or simply Kaalar, and connect it to the popular legend of Sassi, the washerman’s daughter of Bhambore in Sindh, who here becomes a princess, and Punnu, the prince of Kech (Makran), who is transformed into a camel driver. Standing on the crest of a crumbly clay and sandstone ridge on the banks of the seasonal Leti Kas (Stream) in the extreme northwest corner of Talagang tehsil, the stubby ruin is visible from a distance. Built with large kiln fired bricks (440 mm to 480 mm x 260 mm x 50 mm), it is the only Hindu Shahya temple in the Salt Range to use this material. All others being constructed with porous, fossileferous limestone.
Situated at the very edge of the crumbly hill, the building raised above a high plinth of limestone blocks, is entered from the east via the remains of a portico that fell away years ago. Indeed, the erosion that undermined the entrance now threatens to sweep away the entire building. Inside, the floor of the cella has been partially dug up, very likely by treasure hunters. The walls, fortunately, are intact, above which the original roof has been replaced by a cement and steel dome - the brave attempt of some concerned archeologist to preserve the deteriorating structure.
Labels: Books, Punjab, The Salt Range and the Potohar Plateau
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:30,
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Travelling Back in Time
09 July 2013
If I could travel back in time to a particular place, I have one clear choice: Taxila in the late 4th century BCE. Now, this would be at or immediately after the passage of Alexander the Macedonia. This choice is not to have been able to see the all-conquering Alexander. It is a wish to know and live in a virtual Utopia.
Taxila, so the Greeks who were in Alexander’s train tell us, was a city of high culture and learning. Here the streets were sometimes roamed by the philosophers who wore only a loincloth and lived outside where farmland gave way to forest. They came into town and I would have liked to have been there to hear their Stoic views on life – views that they abide by with rigid exactitude. Though they followed a thinking very similar to that of Diogenes, they nevertheless valued life and did not endorse destroying it or persecuting another simply for adhering to a differing way of life. And how could they?
Labels: History, Punjab, Taxila, The Salt Range and the Potohar Plateau, Travel
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Those quaint rest houses
28 April 2013
My friend Kashif Noon called to tell me of a string of forest rest houses stretching from Kallar Sayidan southeast of Rawalpindi all the way to Murree by the road less travelled through Kahuta and Lehtrar. He had heard of them on the good authority of a certain Rizwan Mehboob.
According to Kashif, Rizwan, while serving in the Forest Department nearly twenty years ago, had become very well acquainted with the rest houses and the lore attached to them. It would be useful to travel discover these little known rest houses, some of which owing to a lack of maintenance are now ruinous and may soon be lost forever.
Read more »Labels: Punjab, The Salt Range and the Potohar Plateau
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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The Salt Range and the Potohar Plateau
01 April 2013
Book is available at Sang e Meel (042-3722-0100), Lahore
‘Enclosed, after their emergence [from the mountains], between Indus and Jhelum as between a pair of arms, lies the curious block of country known as the Potwar (sic) plateau; rimmed to the east and south by the relatively puny, though impressive escarpments of the geologically complex Salt Range...’ Ian Stephens in Pakistan.
General view of Soon Valley
Rising abruptly from the Punjabi plains west of the River Jhelum and ending equally precipitously on the Sindhu, one hundred and eighty kilometres in the west, the Salt Range is a mass of sheer escarpments, jagged peaks, rolling hills and desolate ravines gouged out by rivers that have long since ceased to flow but in the more intense deluges. Nestling between these hills, are wide valleys irrigated by spring fed streams, as fertile today as they were a thousand years ago. All of them but the comparatively flatter and more intensely farmed tracts glow a deep, dull red colour. This is the signature of sub soil salt that lies deep underground in vein after substantial vein and gives it name to these low hills.
Labels: Books, Punjab, The Salt Range and the Potohar Plateau
posted by Salman Rashid @ 08:41,
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The Salt Range and the Potohar Plateau
01 March 2013
Neither is The Salt Range and the Potohar Plateau a book of archaeology nor is it a treatise on classic architecture. The Salt Range and the Potohar Plateau is simply a book of fascinating stories known commonly to only a select club of archeologists and historians. It attempts to tell the common reader of the colourful unfolding of history in the Salt Range and the Potohar Plateau not just through the description of ruined monuments but through the folklore.Now in circulation is the second edition of the book first published in 2001.
Labels: Books, The Salt Range and the Potohar Plateau
posted by Salman Rashid @ 15:10,
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